06 Nov What if you are pissed off?

What if you are pissed off? What if you are full on angry? What about rage, is that o.k. to feel? As a woman you have been told subtly and often without an ounce of nuanced language, nothing close to subtle, that you don’t get to be angry. Or, perhaps, more to the point, you are told that you are not welcome to express your anger in any but the most “polite” ways.

Of course, we are expressing this anger and even more so at this particular moment in history. As more of us come together as a community of women we can create places where the movement of the truth of our rage can be communicated. However, even in these communities of women, there can be an expression of oppression around a woman speaking her raw anger, as though the voicing of it is going to instantly destroy all common sense. We are still trying to be polite in the ways that we have been told are acceptable and we are policing ourselves and other women in the process.

The fear that we have inside of our own bodies about the fire of anger becoming all consuming, of erasing our effectiveness, can cause a repression of the natural tidal movement of the energy of anger.I have done it to myself, shamed myself when I feel a specific anger about something that is happening on the planet. There is a little super spiritual critic that lives inside of me; she speaks of “projection”,and of “mirroring”, she tells me to “own my shadows”, to quickly move to a space of “acceptance” and “forgiveness”, whenever I allow myself to feel the anger, to speak the anger. My father used to say to me that he would never tolerate “angry ladies”, though his actions had created some pretty damned angry ladies, including me!He would simply hang up the phone if he didn’t like the anger being expressed, no matter how calmly.

There is literal danger in not being able to feel the validity of your own anger, in not being able to voice it clearly when your boundaries are being stepped on. As a woman,you need to be able to speak your outrage at inappropriate behavior clearly and immediately, without one ounce of apology or doubt. To be able to do so, you must first acknowledge that you are important, that your feelings matter, that you have a right to safety and to an expression of outrage on behalf of yourself if your boundaries are not respected.

As you spend more and more time giving yourself permission to listen to you, to feel you, to be curious about the parts of you who has perhaps not felt safe to express, as you find ways to allow what is in there to come out here, through writing, dancing, sounding, as you make more space for yourself you will probably find a bunch of hot anger in there. If you are already channeling that stuff in a way that feels healthy and is moving you forward then hallelujah!

It is helpful to pay attention to whether you are consumed by the fire, always raging, always hurling hot pointed verbal barbs at others and calling it righteous anger. There is a big difference between being possessed by the fire of rage and working with the pure energy of anger that rises up from a grounded rooted place. You are not required to sacrifice all of your life force to the all consuming fires of endless rage, and you are also not required to pour water over every little fire!

So, how to find your way back to your own truth around anger in a time when some anger is most definitely called for? My suggestion is always to find your way down and in, to create time and space in your day, everyday if you can, where you can breathe into your body long enough to drop below your tricky and beautiful mind. To breathe long and slow and deep, to allow your jaw to loosen, to invite some sound to pour out as you exhale. To dance for 10 minutes in the morning while breathing deeply and making sound, or to sit on your cushy pillow doing it, just to do it! To make some space for your feelings to be felt, first by you in the sacred place of your own body. Then maybe there will be tears, there might be deep, low rumbling growls, and it is all allowed.

You are the keeper of your own knowing and you are the one who holds the key to empowering that knowing within you. Honor yourself with some time, give to yourself some space, invite your feelings to be felt in the safety of your own tender embrace. Every day. You, my dearest, are worthy of your own attention.